As my cousin, Lisa and I walked the main hall toward our next class; she looked me over and said, “That dress really looks nice on you.”
I opened my mouth to thank her but was interrupted by the bell. We were late, but the hall was full of students, everyone was late! The bell continued ringing with everyone looking around, wondering what was going on. Lisa reached out and touched my shoulder as the ringing continued. “Tracy!” The ringing stopped. “Tracy, wake up!” I opened my eyes. It was my mom touching my shoulder.
“Tracy, how in the world do you sleep through this alarm? I could hear it from the kitchen! You had a big smile on your face! What were you dreaming about?”
“Baseball.”
“Again? You sure dream about that a lot! Come get some breakfast and get ready for school.”
“Yeah, I scored a touchdown.”
“A touchdown, huh … in baseball? Even I know better than that!” She also knew I didn’t dream about baseball, but that was my standard answer. She accepted that I didn’t want to share. I groaned and dragged myself out of bed. After a bathroom stop, I shuffled to the dining room and sat down to eggs, sausage, and milk.
We heard someone come in the front door, and a voice came from the living room. “Hello?” Lisa, my cousin, and best friend was there to walk with me to school. My mom and her mom are twin sisters. We are Lisa Michelle Rivers and Tracy Morgan Brooks, hence, sometimes referred to as “Rivers and Brooks”.
Lisa’s parents were separated, and her father’s last name was “Parker”, so it was a mystery from whence came the name “Rivers”. When Lisa asked her mom about it, she said it would be revealed when the time was right.
She came into the dining room. “Hello, Aunt Kim. Hello Tracy … oh my! How much did you drink last night!?”
“Ha ha. Go away.” Lisa was always cheerful in the morning. I’m a morning person, too, when I get a decent amount of sleep.
“He was up on the computer until God knows when,” my mom advised Lisa.
“Homework.”
“We really did have a lot of homework to do on the computer last night, Aunt Kim.”
“Lisa, I’m glad that you want to help your cousin, but please, I’m not stupid. I’m somewhat computer savvy, and I know how to look at ‘history’, so y’all better be careful.”
“That’s right, Lisa. Don’t you wish we knew how to delete our history?”
Mom was on to us. “Except when you forget or don’t bother to delete it. Wanna talk about some of those histories after school?”
Lisa did an “Oh well, I tried” shrug of her shoulders.
“Ok, sure,” I said nonchalantly. But, what had she seen? Must have not been much, because she wasn’t insisting that we talk about it. I figured maybe it was a bluff. If she missed something, I was just lucky, because saying she was ‘somewhat computer savvy’, was a major understatement. She was a photographer and expert photo editor with a room full of state of the art computer and photography equipment, and she could create the most beautiful photos. She had an online business and had photos published in major magazines and websites. Her photos were used in advertisements and illustrations for books and magazines. She had recently started experimented with holograms. For her first hologram project, she got Lisa to pose for photos. She must have taken 1,000 photos of Lisa blowing a kiss. When she finished the project, she had a hologram of Lisa that that would blow a kiss as you walked by it. It looked just like she was pursing her lips, raising her hand to her lips, and blowing a kiss. That was her most impressive project so far. It had the quality of an HD video, except it was in 3D. It was awesome.
I finished breakfast and Lisa and I headed out on the trek to school. Lisa looked back at my mom. “I’ll brush his hair, Aunt Kim,” If it weren’t for Lisa I would go to school looking even more ragged. I cared little about the way I looked. I looked like a boy … at least somewhat … and, as I saw it, you can’t fix that.

Lisa also had a superpower. She could go into a room and tell you the length, width, and height within about ¼”. She then could do the math in her head, and tell you the square footage and the cubic footage of the room. If she went into a room that wasn’t perfectly rectangular or square, (i.e. the corners were not exactly 90 degrees) she could tell you how much they were off within a degree or two.

Note: The following paragraph is an explanation of Lisa’s math ability. This is optional reading for any reader interested in understanding her system. If you don’t care, I wouldn’t blame you. Just skip the paragraph.

Lisa could do some amazing things with math. In only seconds, she would make up short cuts with machinations that most people wouldn’t be able to keep straight without pen and paper. She used these short cuts to quickly solve seemingly complex math problems. She gave me a simple example of how she did it. How tall is a ladder that has 80 rungs that are 9 inches apart? If the rungs were 12 inches apart, it would be 80 feet tall but, since 9” is ¾ of 12”, multiply 80” by ¾ and you find that the ladder is 60 feet tall. As I said, this is a simple example, but when a problem requires 10 steps or more and you realize how difficult it can be to keep up with her machinations. She started working on her system when we first started learning math. She thought that it was so neat that you could multiply or divide by 10 by moving the decimal point. She started looking for other short cuts. She memorized the “times” table up to 15 X 15, and she made a ‘division’ table and memorized that up to 10 ÷ 10. She couldn’t look at a question involving dividing a 10 digit number by a 3 digit number and give you the answer in a few seconds. People who can do that can’t tell you how they do it, and they usually are deficient in other areas, such as social interaction. Lisa’s can tell how she solves because she consciously created her system and can tell you how it works. As far as social interaction, she excels. I’m the one who has a problem there. I ‘know’ her system, but I don’t have a memory like hers. Still, her system helps me.

Lisa also saw things others miss. Once, we were watching a movie on CD. The scene was some people driving through a city, with the thousands of city lights on buildings, billboards, etc. As we watched, Lisa said, “That reminds me, your dad told me that Wells Fargo Bank got into some legal trouble.”

“What reminds you of that?”

“The sign.”

“Which sign? There were hundreds of signs.”

“Well, obviously the Wells Fargo sign! I’ll show you.” She took the remote and ran the CD back, working with it until she got to the right place, then paused it. “See?”

It took a few seconds, but I finally picked out a Wells Fargo sign in the distance among the thousands of other, more prominent lights and signs. You had to have been familiar with the sign to recognize what it was because you could barely read “Wells Fargo”. As I said, it took me a few seconds to even find it, even with the picture frozen. Lisa saw in all the flickering of the scene as we watched.
As we walked to school, I thought about my dream. “Oh, by the way, I was gonna say thanks, but I was interrupted by the bell. Thanks, Lisa!”
“For what?”
“Well, you said my dress looked nice.”
“I said that?”
“Yes, just before I woke up.”
“Oh! That dream again. Well, you’re welcome. I’ll bet it looked better than ‘nice’. You were probably really hot! This has gone on … how long? No one has a clue except you and me … and, I suspect, your parents.”
“My parents don’t have a clue.”
“You misjudge them. See, parents have this kind of ‘radar’ when it comes to their kids, plus your mom has looked at your computer history. Wonder what she thought about the sites you visited that were stores selling dresses, jewelry, and ladies shoes. Parents are not as dumb as they look. I know if my dad was as dumb as he looks, he would be too stupid to breathe! He looks like he’s one brick shy of a full load … like his elevator doesn’t go to the top….”
“Lisa, I’ve seen pictures of your dad. He’s pretty good looking, as men go. If he’s so stupid, why are you making straight ‘A’s?”
“Well, my dad is not a genius, but he’s not as dumb as he looks. Still, I get most of my smarts from my mom. My dad’s parents are smart, too. He’s an anomaly.”
“A variation from the norm.”
“Close enough.”
Lisa and I had a running competition about vocabulary. We would learn a new word and try to stump the other by using it. We didn’t keep track of who was ahead, but we stayed pretty even.
“Tracy, when are you gonna tell your parents, ‘Mom and Dad, I am sick and tired of this ‘boy’ thing. A mistake was made somehow and I should have been born a girl. Could I please see about having surgery to correct this mistake’?”
“I said it!”
“You told your parents!?”
“No, I said it in front of the mirror. Just rehearsing.”
“Rehearsing? When is show time?”
“When I think I’m gonna do it, I consider it for about 30 seconds and I chicken out. I can see the three of us at the dinner table and the disappointment on their faces. I can hear the questions: ‘How long have you felt this way?’ ‘Are you gay?’ But the best one is, ‘You know, you could have come to us any time.’ Yeah, right. Not after I heard their comments about a transsexual who was in the news last week.”
“You’re right. That does make it tough.”
As we approached the school, we saw two girls standing near an oak tree, talking. They both were wearing tight mini-dresses … one blue, one with a flower pattern. I groaned.
“Damn Tracy. You’re just miserable! Most guys would be crazy with lust over those girls. You envy them! You gotta do something!”
“You’re right, and soon. Lisa, I want to show you something. Let’s find someplace private.”
Next: An unexpected disorder